Lazy Chief Studios produced a stunning animation that highlights Beau Lotto's musings on perception and storytelling. Lotto is a prominent neuroscientist and founder of Lottolab; a hybrid art studio and science lab that plays with how the brain perceives reality.

According to Lotto:

What’s remarkable is that when you imagine something, the same part of the brain is activated, as if they are seeing. So imagined perception is the same as a real perception.

This implies that it is within our power to shape and heal the world with the narratives we tell to ourselves and others.

Perception is basically a story. Objects in the real world don’t come with a meaning. They don’t come with an instruction manual. They don’t tell you what to do... Now these stories can have two basis; either they are as things that literally happened... [or] events that happened in our minds. We can imagine. And what’s remarkable is that when we really imagine something, it activates the same part of our brain as if we’re actually seeing it. So an imagined perception is the same as a real perception. This has tremendous impact for thinking about the narrative that a culture tells us of. Being social is fundamental to who we are. If you’re excommunicated from your group [in our past], you died. So it’s hugely important for us to belong. One consequence of that is that we come to see differences between people, but through the power of narrative, we can actually change those biases. We can tell a different story.

— Beau Lotto

Beau Lotto's 2009 TED TALK:

The above post was lovingly crafted by Josiah Hultgren, Founder of MindFullyAlive.